On Mon, Aug 26, 2024 at 06:24:16PM +0200, Miquel Raynal wrote: > When dumping long buffers (especially for debug purposes) it may be very > convenient to sometimes avoid spitting all the lines of the buffer if > the lines are identical. Typically on embedded devices, the console > would be wired to a UART running at 115200 bauds, which makes the dumps > very (very) slow. In this case, having a flag to avoid printing > duplicated lines is handy. > > Example of a made up repetitive output: > 0f 53 63 47 56 55 78 7a aa b7 8c ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 01 2a 39 eb > > Same but with the flag enabled: > 0f 53 63 47 56 55 78 7a aa b7 8c ff ff ff ff ff > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff > * > ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 01 2a 39 eb The problem here is that without offset we can't see how many lines were skipped. Two ways to solve (that come to my mind immediately, maybe more and better): 1) make sure that new flag implies or expects (otherwise BUILD_BUG_ON() or so) the OFFSET to be set; 2) [OR] add number of lines skipped in that * line. Personally I prefer the 1) as I think that you tried to follow the existing format of user space tools and there is a chance that there are other tools or scripts that parse the dump to restore the binary contents. -- With Best Regards, Andy Shevchenko
